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The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

- Ahmt Han

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a 1985 American romantic fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Inspired by Sherlock, Jr., Hellzapoppin', and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is the tale of a film character who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real world.

Mia Farrow as CeciliaJeff Daniels as Tom Baxter/Gil ShepherdDanny Aiello as MonkEdward Herrmann as HenryJohn Wood as JasonDeborah Rush as RitaZoe Caldwell as The CountessVan Johnson as Larry WildeKaren Akers as Kitty HaynesMilo O'Shea as Father DonnellyDianne Wiest as EmmaGeorge Martin as Movie Audience

Set in New Jersey during the Great Depression,
the film tells the story of Cecilia, a clumsy waitress who goes to the
movies to escape her bleak life and loveless, abusive marriage to Monk,
whom she has attempted to leave on numerous occasions.

The latest film Cecilia sees is a fictitious RKO Radio Pictures film, The Purple Rose of Cairo.
It is the story of a rich Manhattan playwright named Henry who goes on
an exotic vacation to Egypt with companions Jason and Rita. While in
Egypt, the three meet archaeologist Tom Baxter. Tom is brought back for a
"madcap Manhattan weekend" where he falls head-over-heels for Kitty
Haynes, a chanteuse at the Copacabana.

After Cecilia sits through the film several times, Tom, noticing her, breaks the fourth wall, and emerges from the black-and-white
screen into the colorful real world on the other side of the cinema's
screen. He tells Cecilia that he is attracted to her after noticing her
watching him so many times, and she takes him around her New Jersey
town. Later, he takes her into the film and they have a great evening on
the town within the film. The two fall in love. But the character's
defection from the film has caused some problems. In other copies of the
film, others have tried to exit the screen.

The producer of the film learns that Tom has left the film, and he flies cross-country to New Jersey with actor Gil Shepherd (the "real life" actor playing the part of Tom in the movie). This sets up an unusual love triangle
involving Tom, Gil, and Cecilia. Cecilia must choose between them and
she decides to choose the real person of Gil rather than the fantasy
figure of Tom. She gives up the chance to return with Tom to his world,
choosing to stay with Gil and have a 'real' life. Then she breaks up
with her husband.

But Gil's professions of love for Cecilia were false—he wooed her only
to get Tom to return to the movie and thereby save his own Hollywood
career. Gil abandons Cecilia and is seen quietly racked with guilt on
his flight back to Hollywood. Having been left without a lover, job, or
home, Cecilia ends up immersing herself in the frothy escapism of
Hollywood once again, sitting in a theater watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing to "Cheek-to-Cheek" in the film Top Hat, forgetting her dire situation and losing herself in the film.

Several scenes featuring Tom and Cecilia are set at the Bertrand Island Amusement Park,
which closed just prior to the film's production. Many of the outside
scenes were filmed in Piermont, NY, a tiny village on the Hudson River
about 15 miles north of the George Washington Bridge. Store fronts had
false facades reflecting the depression-era setting. It was also filmed
at the Raritan Diner in South Amboy, New Jersey. Woody Allen shut down the Kent Theater on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, the neighborhood he grew up in, to film there.

In a rare public appearance at the National Film Theatre in 2001, Woody Allen listed The Purple Rose of Cairo as one of only a few of his films that ended up being "fairly close to what I wanted to do" when he set out to write it. Allen provided more detail about the film's origins in a comment he made a year earlier, during a press junket for Small Time Crooks:

Purple Rose was a film that I just locked myself in a room [to
write].... I wrote it and halfway through it didn't go anywhere and I
put it aside. I didn't know what to do. I toyed around with other ideas.
Only when the idea hit me, a long time later, that the real actor comes
to town and she has to choose between the [screen] actor and the real
actor and she chooses the real actor and he dumps her, that was the time
it became a real movie. Before that it wasn't. But the whole thing was
manufactured.

Ahmt Han

For most of human history, the ability to access materials for free through public libraries has been a central part of our culture, producing generations of avid readers and a knowledgeable, engaged citizenry. Old Movies Posters works, along with like-minded organizations and individuals. Old Movies Posters aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered.